Study Points to Dangers of Vitamin Supplements

This study might make you think twice about popping a multi. A 19-year analysis of almost 39,000 women found that those who took dietary supplements including multivitamins, vitamin B6, folic acid, iron, magnesium, zinc and copper were at a higher risk of death than women who did not.

The study was conducted by researchers at the University of Minnesota and the University of Eastern Finland, who believe there's no reason for the average healthy person to take dietary supplements.

“Based on existing evidence, we see little justification for the general and widespread use of dietary supplements,” the authors wrote. “We recommend that they be used with strong medically based cause, such as symptomatic nutrient deficiency disease.”

Participants were around age 62 at the start of the study in 1986. Among them, those who took supplements had about a 2.4 percent increased risk of dying over the course of the study, compared with women who didn’t take supplements. Only the women who took calcium supplements had a reduced risk of dying.

Doctors Goran Bjelakovic of the University of Nis in Serbia and Christian Gluud of Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark wrote in an accompanying commentary that the findings “add to the growing evidence demonstrating that certain antioxidant supplements, such as vitamin E, vitamin A and beta-carotene, can be harmful.” But they added that vitamin D3 may be beneficial to some older women, and possibly older men.

Rania Batayneh, MPH, nutritionist and owner of Essential Nutrition For You, agreed that while getting nutrients through food is ideal, women may need to supplement their diets with additional calcium and vitamin D3.

“Women

50 and younger need 1,000 daily milligrams of calcium, but most of us can get there with few daily servings of dairy and veggies,” she says.

“Before you pop supplements, first tally how much calcium you get from your typical diet, and then use supplements to make up the difference of what you’re missing from food.”

As for v

itamin D3, that’s the form of vitamin D that is synthesized by the skin when it’s exposed to the sun or ultraviolet light/UVB.

D3 can be obtained after 10-15 minutes of sun exposure (without sunscreen). If you’re avoiding the sun, supplements are a recommended substitute. The current RDA on D3 is 1,000 IU’s a day for those over the age of 20.

Batayneh also recommends folic acid for women in their childbearing years, which is found in prenatal supplements. And despite the study, she still thinks a good multivitamin is fine for most women and reduces the need for additional supplementing.

But when possible,

it’s better to get your nutrients from food.

“Food really is medicine and there is nothing that compares with a healthy balanced diet,” she says.